User:Anastassis Perrakis

I am a research group leader in the area of Structural Molecular Biology.

As a pre-doctoral fellow at the EMBL-Hamburg laboratory under the supervision of Keith Wilson, I worked on the structures of chitinolytic enzymes, a family of enzymes with high biotechnological interest. Our publications on Chitinase A (Structure, 1994), Chitobiase (Nature Structural Biology, 1995) and their chemical mechanism for chitin hydrolysis (Journal Americal Chemical Society, 1996) have been cited more than 500 times altogether. As an EMBO long term fellow in the group of Titia Sixma at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), I started a project on the structure determination of the DNA mismatch recognition protein MutS. At the same time I helped to initiate the crystallography infrastructure of the NKI lab, and started my work on wARP (cited about 300 times) which was to lead a couple of years later to the popular ARP/wARP software package for X-ray crystallography. I moved on as a staff scientist in the group of Stephen Cusack at the EMBL-Grenoble, where for three years I participated in a team that built and commissioned the µ-diffractometer at ESRF beamline ID13. I also pursued my post-doctoral work research interests in DNA mismatch repair, and determined the structure of MutS in complex with mismatched DNA, published in Nature in 2000. At the same time we have released the first version of ARP/wARP, the first automated macromolecular model building software for X-ray crystallography; the paper we published in 1999 in Nature Structural Biology has enjoyed more than 1,500 citations since. In 2000 I moved back to the NKI where as an independent group leader I have established a research team funded by external competitive grants.

My research team focuses on structural and biophysical aspects of the cellular mechanisms that ensure correct DNA inheritance: DNA replication and the subsequent chromatid separation during mitosis. Our research continues to be complemented by the activity in developing the ARP/wARP software for automated protein model building, which is evolving to a platform for three dimensional pattern recognition in Structural Biologyn; the publication about ARP/wARP enjoy collectively about 3,000 citations. Moreover, my team has played an active role in the successful implementation of Structural Genomics (Proteomics) initiatives in Europe, in the SPINE initiative. I have been the scientific organizer of a series of EMBO practical courses, international meetings such as the CCP4 workshop and the Como School, guest editor for Acta Crystallographical D, and invited lecturer and teacher in various international conferences, workshops, and courses. I regularly review papers for various journals; I have also served in advisory groups and grant selection committees in the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, and Austria; finally I have been the external examiner for PhD students in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Greece and Denmark. Our group is currently funded by grants from the European Commission FP6 and FP7 programs, the National Institute of Health in the USA (NIH), the Dutch Science Organization (NWO) and the Dutch Royal Cancer Fund (KWF).

Academic qualifications
 * University of York, Department of Chemistry — PhD, 1996
 * University of Athens, Department of Biology — Diploma (Πτυχίο), 1992

Awards and fellowhips
 * EMBO Young Investigator, 2001
 * EMBO long term postdoctoral fellow, 1996-97
 * EU pre-doctoral fellowship, 1994-1995
 * EMBL pre-doctoral fellowship, 1993-1994

Publications I have published in peer reviewed international journals 56 original research papers and 15 reviews and book chapters; in 27 of these publications I have been one of the major authors (first or last). My work has been cited more than 4,000 times (source:Scopus) and my Hirch-index is 26 (26 of my papers have been cited at least 26 times). My most cited publication has been published in 1999 in Nature Structural Biology and has over 1,500 citations, making it the most cited paper in the history of the journal and one of the most cited papers in this research area over the last ten years.